French provider to roll out emulation service to subscribers

Our colleagues over at Xtemulation have reported and translated that the French telecom/tv provider Free would be planning to roll out an emulation service for its subscribers on its Freebox HD platform.

The information was not to be disclosed to the public yet, as the info page was removed quickly. Any traces of the service on public video sites such as Youtube have been removed as well. Screenshots were taken however, and the original article was translated to English by Hard Core Rikki:

"Directly accessible on your TV via the Freebox TV service, the games proposed by Free can be played with the included remote.

The game library developped internally (minesweeper, solitaire, morpion, bomberbox, Sokobox, Scavenger, Snakebox...) can be easily complemented by hundreds of emulated games.

For that, it suffices to be in possession of emulator ROMS or obtain ones from any existing legal download platforms (like pdroms.de) and to copy them on the FreeboxTV hard drive through FTP, a USB key (or any DDE) which can be connected to the Freebox HD.

A Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as tutorials are also available so that hobbyist subscribers eager to develop new games for the community can do so.

Available starting from today, this free service is available to all DSL subscribers equipped with a Freebox HD, wether or not qualifying for the TV service.

It is also available on a second TV for MultiTV subscribers.

Free will soon extend this service to support multiplayer."

Click to expand...

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By providing only the Emulators, often labeled as a "gray area" by many opponents from the gaming industry, the company makes it the user's responsibility to obtain the ROMs that are to be used for gaming. With their recent passing of the "Three Strikes" law, where a third copyright offense may mean you will lose your internet access, it will interesting to see the response of copyright holders such as Nintendo to this development.

Source: XTemu, original at Freezone.fr